Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

theocharis.dev

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#891

Post by db48x »

lpribis wrote: post #461
db48x wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. An Amtrak train would just stop at the next convenient road crossing, if there were really something preventing them from stopping at the scheduled station. Most Amtrak stations don't even have staff, or any way to prevent people from coming and going, so this would most likely involve construction on the station platform itself. That’s fairly rare but the last time I took the Zephyr headed east there was…

They can't realistically do this in Germany because the tracks are so much more busy than the US. There would more than likely be a train coming the other direction within the next few minutes, and they cannot guarantee all the people have time to vacate the track area.

Right, but Germany has stations every few miles. Here in America the next station might be hours and hundreds of miles away. Better to stop ¼ mile away instead; people will hardly know the difference. The point is that if for any reason they cannot reach the station then they’ll always stop at the nearest safe place instead. The crew always have an alternate stop.

For really long construction work they’ll actually build an entirely separate train station, like they did in Denver Colorado a few years back. They knew that the construction of the new station downtown would take a few years, so they built a really cheap platform a few miles away on a siding and moved all the arrivals and departures there for the duration.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#892

Post by koyote »

renewiltord wrote: post #603
sajithdilshan wrote: post #223

Unfortunately nowadays traveling with DB has become a game of Russian roulette. If you get lucky the train arrives at the destination ahead of time and if you're unlucky most probably a delay of 4+ hours and missing your connecting train. The main reason for this is lack of competition for DB in Germany. I used to date a guy who works at infra department in DB and based on what he told me, I couldn't believe how inef…

That’s pretty strange about this competition thing. I’ve been repeatedly informed that the government is much better at running things like this.

The irony is that OPs train, the RE5, was actually not run by DB but by 'the competition': a private company called National Express.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Express_Germany

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#893

Post by sfjailbird »

Tommix11 wrote: post #383
Zealotux wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked for a massive German company you heard of, this sounds more like the typical German philosophy of strictly following the process -- as absurd as it might be -- and refusing to take initiative for anything that is not explicitly defined as one's responsibility. As a French, the culture shock was brutal and I never really got around that work attitude. I went through a similar issue back when I used to take a…

The German philosophy is also very much prevalent in Sweden.

Oh yes. Driving over from Copenhagen to Malmoe (10 km) it's like you've entered the land of the robots. It's nice and clean though.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#894

Post by faust201 »

xenocratus wrote: post #239
indiantinker wrote: post #17

DB is weird. They seem to make their own rules and then run the game and “dont tell the rules to anyone”. I was on my way to catch a flight from Munich to my home (Madrid). I didn’t knew that apparently at one point the train splits into two parts and the front part goes to the airport and the other part just goes to the nearby cattle farms and comes back in 3 hours. Google Maps - No idea Citymapper - what? English a…

We took that train, realised when we got to the other end of the line that we hadn't gotten where we expected, then turned back to the place where it separates. Waited for the next advertised train to airport (it's signalled on the electronic board as two separate entries; yes, it says "board whatever carriages for airport, and the rest for ...", or at least I assume it did, as it was in German of course; but again,…

> And don't get me started on the ticketing machines not accepting Visa, Mastercard, or Amex at the central station in Munchen

Wow. You travel to a different part of the world without doing basic research. Hope you did not try stuffing USD on machines.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#895

Post by rostigerpudel »

T0Bi wrote: post #525
indiantinker wrote: post #17

DB is weird. They seem to make their own rules and then run the game and “dont tell the rules to anyone”. I was on my way to catch a flight from Munich to my home (Madrid). I didn’t knew that apparently at one point the train splits into two parts and the front part goes to the airport and the other part just goes to the nearby cattle farms and comes back in 3 hours. Google Maps - No idea Citymapper - what? English a…

When was this? Took the train (S1) last week and every single screen at the stations and in the train explains this in detail and there are probably 20 announcements both in German and English telling everybody which coach goes to the airport and which to Freising. It's not that complicated.

Completely agree. They even recruited a native BBC level English speaker as the voice actor for the announcements.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#896

Post by starkparker »

bradley13 wrote: post #857

Reminds me of my time in Scotland. I commuted by train, and they published stats that showed my route as 95% on time "excepting conditions outside our control". In the year I was there, the train arrived on-time exactly once. Apparently very little was under their control. They did occasionally announce the reasons for delays. Two that I remember: "Leaves on the track" in Autumn, what a surprise. "The wrong kind of s…

On a recent train from London to Bath. it was delayed because the train in front of me had hit a swan and came off worse for the wear. Its passengers had to disembark, and ours had to stop to take them on.

On the train back, we were delayed by the train in front of us catching fire.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#897

Post by jstanley »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #308

The term "kidnapped" is kinda over the top, but I can understand the author. I've travelled with Polish trains a lot when studying, and there were a few situations like this. Especially frustrating, if the train stops because of "some issue" while you can literally see the platform 200m away. No, you can't get out and walk the track (which will be guaranteed to be empty, because well, the train is broken) and take a…

> The term "kidnapped" is kinda over the top

If you got in a taxi to take you 35km away and he drove you 60km away to a random other town instead, would you consider "kidnapped" to be over the top?

Does it only count as "kidnap" if you are not eventually released? Or is it just that it's not kidnap when a corporation does it?

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#898

Post by rostigerpudel »

sauercrowd wrote: post #98
tirant wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you took the S1 S-Bahn. Yes, it always splits in Neufahrn. Part of the train goes to the airport, the other section to Freising (a cute University city, by the way) That is indicated on the platform screens before getting on the train. It tells you which part of the train goes where so you know which wagon to take. I found it also not very intuitive first time I took it. But hey, when travelling there’s alway…

Strong disagree. For most parts travelling is a non-event these days. A train that splits, on the way to the airport where there will be a lot of non-german speaking people, and for some reason only shows it on the platform is insane. Having a train that splits on that route is already bad enough, but you HAVE to emphasize it on the train. I know that I need to pay attention to this, because I've grown up with DB pul…

You get repeated hints like 20 times outside and inside the train. Announcements (also in english, recorded, by an english native speaker, repeatedly), the train displays explain it and when you get to the station where the train splits, every display in that train shows you whether you're in the right carriage and you get an extra announcement exclusive to the carriages that go somewhere else that you should change now if you want to go to the airport.

This really is the original poster's problem.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#899

Post by ruszki »

pimeys wrote: post #729
ruszki wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can. But they should also not be assholes with everybody else. And no not just local trains, I got information in English exactly zero times when there were huge delays on international trains. And it happened 2 times from 3 when I tried to cross Germany by train. And Germans (and Austrians btw) are terrible with this, even compared to others. The German site at my multinational company at the time was the only…

YMMV. I worked in three different German startups in Berlin and I almost never heard anybody speaking German in the company, even though more than half of the people were from Germany. Maybe it's different in bigger companies, or outside Berlin?

I would rather say older companies, and Berlin is definitely a different beast. That’s the only place where I had similarly good experience in Germany/Austria, and heard consistently good hearsay regarding this. It’s still way worse averagely than Nordic countries, Netherlands, or even some Eastern European countries. And here, I specifically mean when they can speak English, they just choose not to.

Re: Kidnapped by Deutsche Bahn

#900

Post by OrangeMusic »

lmm wrote: post #840
pjmlp wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, although quite often they forget not everyone speaks German. I once had a bit of Schadenfrunde while travelling in Netherlands, having the conductor telling us to switch trains in Dutch, and all my German fellow travellers wondering what it was all about.

> Yes, although quite often they forget not everyone speaks German. Do you complain when announcements in your home country are given in exclusively non-German languages?

This is a bad faith argument. English is (like it or not) the international language. If you want tourists to understand what's happening, do announcements in your local language and in English.

Making announcements in German in the US makes little sense.

Post reply on HN